By Brigitte L. Nacos
If one looks for a case to demonstrate the problem of jazzed up breaking news accompanied by incomplete information and wrong conclusions, last night and today’s reporting on the elections for the European Parliament make for a perfect example. After watching the BBC, Euro News, and CNN, I was sure that far-right parties had won a landslide victory in the EU parliament. One commentator considered the far-right showing so strong that he saw it also as a good omen for Donald Trump and bad news for Joe Biden. A historic shift.
The reality is this: After this election, the EU parliament in Strasbourg has a total of 720 seats. The two far-right parties combined won 131 of those seats, 13 seats more than they had before. Because the two right-extreme factions do not see eye to eye, there is no unified far-right bloc on policy issues. The biggest party remains the center-right European People’s Party made up of deputies belonging to Germany’s Christian Democrats, the second largest bloc form Socialist Democrats with 185 seats.
Add to this that EU elections have lower turnouts than elections in individual countries. The turnout for this latest EU election was slightly over 50%. In past EU elections, too, extreme parties fared better than in their respective country’s contests.
No doubt, news claims that the far-right was the big winner in the EU elections were wrong; the actual gains were very modest.
How could that happen? Based on what I heard and read, most reporting did not focus on what the results meant for the EU parliament but for the political landscape in individual member states.
And, yes, there were notable changes but, again, not as mind-blogging as reported.
In France, Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National won 32% of the vote—more than any other party, but far from an absolute majority. It will be interesting to see, how Rassemblement National will do in the soon to be held parliamentary elections that President Macron called in a surprising move in reaction to the election results.
In Italy, Georgia Meloni’s Fratelli Italia remained the strongest party and increased its vote percentage to 28%--not exactly a smashing majority or plurality. No wonder that Meloni’s actual policy was and will probably remain pro-EU and supportive of the Transatlantic Alliance.
In Austria, the far-right Freiheitliche Partei became with 26% of the vote the leading party before the center-right Volkspartei with 25% and will have trouble to form a coalition government.
In Germany, the far-right Alternative fuer Deutschland won 16% of the vote and became second strongest party behind the CDU/CSU with 30% of the vote. In Eastern Germany, once part of the Soviet bloc, the AfD is the majority party. But in the Bundestag, Germany's parliament, no other party will work with the neo-Nazi party in a governing coalition.
Most importantly, in the individual countries, the EU elections resembled surveys that provided a measurement of contemporary voter sentiments causing no immediate governmental changes except for Belgium, where the Prime Minister resigned because of the poor showing of his party in the EU election.
The real and good news is that the Far-Right will not control the EU parliament nor the vast majority of its 27 member states in the foreseeable future.
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